But is cold emailing worth it? Most investors claim that they (and most others) never respond to cold emails. It's been said that reaching an investor through their network is a kind of mandatory IQ test.
I've mailed VCs as a first-time founder and got a response or follow-up meeting.
ditto
In what year though? I feel like a lot of VC's have adopted this trend of forcing you to befriend random people they have funded before, to introduce you in. Not because it is actually a good method, but because they saw a few popular VCs were doing it and jumped onboard.